Why is it so hard to shoot down enemy fighters/bombers?

Question

King
Joined
Mar 12, 2008
Messages
950
I noticed that even jet fighters with max interception upgrades would only do 30-40 damage or so to a bomber which is one era behind.

Since only one unit can intercept a single unit, you can send 1 bomber into an area protected by 10 fighters and not worry about it getting shot down. Sure you take some extra damage (30-40) but thats easily healed up, especially if you have air repair.

I dont see any way to shoot down attacking fighters/bombers unless you have such a massive tech lead that you are intercepting triplanes with fighters or something.

Also even though you intercept a bomber, it will still do damage to its target. I found out the hard way when the AI just zerged my carriers with bombers...even though i intercepted all of them, the bombers still did enough damage to sink the carrier and all the planes with it. How many bombers did he lose? None, because intercepting jet fighters cant deal enough damage to kill bombers...
 
I find that my fighters generally start shooting down bombers on about the third or fourth turn of the war. The AI will usually attack with damaged aircraft even if it means death. Make sure you are not using your fighter during your turn to attack or air sweep. It has to be set on intercept for the full turn. Also, grab the intercept promotions, with an eye toward the one that lets you do two interceptions per turn. Overall, I would say if you don't see a shot down notification by turn five in an air war, there's something wrong.

The problem with this time, as you noticed, is that your units are getting shot at while you are waiting. I just go for the city that has the bombers and blitz it if I can. No great advice here except that AA units, while annoying to build, can protect your carpet of doom from the air attacks.
 
Which era? Instead of carriers, try nuclear submarines. :)
 
Provided it's not an exclusively-naval battle, build mobile SAMs over any of the interceptor planes. From my experiences, they almost always can take down a bomber in one shot. A lot less damage is able to seep through too. I think even the AA guns are stronger than fighters.
 
I always send my battleships out with at least one carrier loaded with triplanes/fighters. It does effectively protect the battleships from air attack while laying siege to a city, and it does eventually kill the enemy bombers, though it can take a few turns.
 
Provided it's not an exclusively-naval battle, build mobile SAMs over any of the interceptor planes. From my experiences, they almost always can take down a bomber in one shot. A lot less damage is able to seep through too. I think even the AA guns are stronger than fighters.

^^What she said... fighters are okay in a way but tend to be more fun than ok when it comes to bomber interception and shot down. Land unit anti airs are better.
 
Ally your self with a militarstic CS, they will give you plenty of AA guns to place around your cities. I dont know if it is because I never build them my self but they keep giving them to me. And they work very well against bombers.
 
I think the culprit is the way the air combat system works. You cant deal enough damage to one shot a full hp aircraft because it takes a massive combat strength difference to do that. But you only get one try, after which the aircraft will be safely back at base healing.

Meanwhile your units are in hostile territory and if they are naval ones, probably unable to heal.
 
I find that my fighters generally start shooting down bombers on about the third or fourth turn of the war.

This is my experience as well. Note, that this just fighters versus bombers. Jet fighters still prolly don't start kills until the 3rd turn, but bombers disappear noticeably faster!
 
When staging a Naval Invasion in SP, I tend to bombard with 4 Battleships and bring along 3 Carriers. Each Carrier (with upgrades) holds 2 Bombers and 2 Fighters. I tend to 'Pathe the Way' via Air Sweeps for my Bombers with my Fighters more often than I set them to Intercept Aircraft. The key to a Naval Invasion is a speedy surpise attack that catches the poor AI Airforce on the tarmac. If my AI Enemy has a large Air Force, I find that an Atom Bomb dropped from a Carrier speeds things up nicely as well. Conversely, in the unlikley event that you must repel an AI Naval Invasion with Bombers/Fighters I recommend Anti-Aircraft Units over Fighters on Intercept.
 
I've found fighters are still extremely useful. Even if it takes 3-4 turns to finish off a bomber, if you intercept the bomber, it does extremely low damage on that turn, even if it is not killed. The major advantage of fighters over anti-aircraft ground units, is fighters have a much larger range.
 
I think its quite sad that a single bomber can survive after flying into a massive swarm of fighters/AA units though, and infact, there is no way to kill it unless the AI suicides it at low hp or you destroy its airbase.

Meanwhile every time your ships take damage they have to retreat to heal which is a 3 turn delay at minimum.

You can even zerg a carrier down even if all your bombers get intercepted. If the carrier sinks, all the planes are lost...whereas if your bombers get damaged from intercepts, who cares, they heal up in a turn or two.
 
I think its quite sad that a single bomber can survive after flying into a massive swarm of fighters/AA units though, and infact, there is no way to kill it unless the AI suicides it at low hp or you destroy its airbase.

Meanwhile every time your ships take damage they have to retreat to heal which is a 3 turn delay at minimum.

You can even zerg a carrier down even if all your bombers get intercepted. If the carrier sinks, all the planes are lost...whereas if your bombers get damaged from intercepts, who cares, they heal up in a turn or two.

Are you playing the original game? From my experience, which has mostly been with GnK when it comes to war, bombers were rendered next to useless when intercepted. They'd do like 5 damage (out of 100) per bomber if they are intercepted. Has that changed in GNK?
 
Im plaiyng BNW but 10 bombers was enough to sink a carrier and drop a missle cruiser to yellow...
 
A bit strange, since successful interceptions, even if the bomber is not shot down, cause the attack to only do 5 to 10 damage.

Then again I guess at 10 damage per bomber, 10 of them could sink a ship in one turn. Kind of a costly way to do it without air repair, though (which the AI will almost certainly not have). So they'll be out of action for the next few turns, unless they choose to attack again immediately, which probably will lead to them getting shot down.

That might be the reason they put a cap on the number of air units that can be stacked in a city.
 
Im plaiyng BNW but 10 bombers was enough to sink a carrier and drop a missle cruiser to yellow...

After that turn, their bombers will be doing less and less damage, so one lost ship and 3 aircraft is your loss, and assuming you had a decent fleet going against him, you should still be in position to win the battle. If he has 10 bombers, he's in pretty strong position, and if you can't stand one lost ship and 3 aircraft, you were not in position to win anyways.
 
I think its quite sad that a single bomber can survive after flying into a massive swarm of fighters/AA units though, and infact, there is no way to kill it unless the AI suicides it at low hp or you destroy its airbase.

Yeah, but, a single bomber is not a big deal. It's when the AI hits you with 15 bombers that you suddenly appreciate the way fighters work. Each fighter/AA on intercept will stop ONE bomber, and even if it doesn't kill that bomber, it will stop it from doing damage to your units. And after a few turns yes the bombers will be back at base healing -- but that means they aren't attacking your units either.

So what if the fighter didn't actually kill the bomber? It kept your battleships, artillery, infrantry, etc., alive so that could continue attacking the city. Or if you're the defender, it kept those bombers from damaging your city, buying you a few more turns to wipe out the idiotic AI units that are jumping in and out of the lake by your capital.

I find that fighters are VERY effective -- you just need to understand their purpose is to provide air cover to keep your other units alive. And they do that pretty well.
 
After that turn, their bombers will be doing less and less damage, so one lost ship and 3 aircraft is your loss, and assuming you had a decent fleet going against him, you should still be in position to win the battle. If he has 10 bombers, he's in pretty strong position, and if you can't stand one lost ship and 3 aircraft, you were not in position to win anyways.

Here is the solution to that: Keep your valuable ships to the rear for the first few turn until the AI runs out of steam and isn't killing ships anymore. Hang back with your carrier so that it is out of sight for the AI (and aggressively kill any AI ships that get close enough to see it). That will prevent the AI from killing your carriers / fighters while keeping them close enough to intercept AI bombers.

Send low promoted battleships forward to sit just out of reach of the AI's city attack, picking off any defending naval ships. Keep your promoted battleships to the rear to deal with anybody who gets close to your carrier.

Once the AI's counter-attack is weak (bombers all healing, naval all dead) then move in with all your highly promoted ships and switch to air sweep / bombing runs and take that city down fast.
 
Meanwhile your units are in hostile territory and if they are naval ones, probably unable to heal.

Before I start a naval siege of an enemy city I do everything possible to ally at least one nearby CS, within 2-3 moves, so that I have somewhere to heal.

It is amazing how much of a difference it makes if you plan your attack 15 turns ahead or so -- send a spy to a strategic city state, concentrate on bribing it, work hard on any quest it puts out, until you have that ally right where you need to be to heal your damaged ships during the coming war.

Getting open borders with a neighbouring civ is another way to do that.

If all else fails, and there is some scraggly little stupid rock in the middle of the sea, with tundra and 1 fish, and you are about to take down the leading AI -- send a settler and found a city there. You can sell that miserable hell hole of a city to someone else once the war is over...
 
Top Bottom